Marguerite Duras was one of France’s most important and prolific writers. Born Marguerite Donnadieu in 1914 in what was then French Indochina, she went to Paris in 1931 to study at the Sorbonne. During WWII she was active in the Resistance, and in 1945 she joined the Communist Party. Duras wrote many novels, plays, films, and essays during her lifetime. She is perhaps best known for her internationally bestselling novel The Lover, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1984. She died in Paris in 1996.

Olivia Baes is a trilingual Franco-American writer and actress. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Comparative Literature and a Master of the Arts in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris.

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, RI, where she co-owns Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright for her translation work. Her translations include Anne Garréta’s Sphinx and Not One Day, Virginie Despentes’s Pretty Things, Ahmed Bouanani’s The Shutters, and Marcus Malte’s The Boy.

Dan Gunn is a novelist, critic, and translator, as well as being one of the editors of the four-volume Letters of Samuel Beckett and editor of the Cahiers Series. He is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature & English at the American University of Paris where he directs the Center for Writers & Translators. He was designated in 2017 as editor of Muriel Spark’s letters. - (Random House, Inc.)